Militarism, Misanthropy and the Body Politic: - Brunel University

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EnterText 6.2 in particular, is both a bad object and a useful one: David keeps throwing the cans into recycle bins, but he also uses it to demonstrate how to dismantle the alien ship. After the alien encounter, as with all the male leads in Independence Day, his defects are cured. For Levinson, physical health and the preservation of the planet are no longer as important as his friends and material needs. Mellowed, he is happy to smoke cigars. We assume he will now fit more easily within consumer culture. Independence Day does give its male leads some admirable characteristics, and, on a positive note, Levinson possesses the intellectual curiosity and courage to investigate the aliens’ signal as well as their spacecraft. Homosexuality Marty Gilbert is more flaming than the characters in the film version of La Cage aux Folles (Edouard Molinaro, 1978) or the much tamer American version The Bird Cage (Mike Nichols, 1996). He runs on the balls of his feet with his arms before him, elbows limp and hands dangling at the wrists. His voice is a strange amalgam of gravel and the complete frequency spectrum from high to low. He has made the wrong object choices for loved ones—when the alien attack seems imminent, his first urge is to contact his mother, his maid, his brother, his psychiatrist, his lawyer, and then his mother again so she can contact his Aunt Esther. Unlike everyone else who runs to the bomb shelter, he hides under his metal desk with a phone as if he were rehearsing a 1950s “duck and cover” drill, but he’s so chunky he barely fits. Perhaps this is why it is supposed to be funny when, as aliens incinerate city buildings, he gets squashed under a car as in a cartoon. The desk should have done him in, in the first place. Carol Vernallis: Independence Day 81
EnterText 6.2 Marty Gilbert’s entrance at the cable station is prepared through the mise-en- scène. The scene opens with a man walking screen left, down a corridor into the distance away from us. He has Marty’s build, and wears shorts that extend below his knees, a silly shirt, and goofy looking socks pulled up high. Screen right, as extras cross the frame and the camera moves toward the soda machine, a young man with a backwards baseball cap does a penguin walk, toes turned inward, and quickly straightens up. 37 Even before Marty enters the newsroom, we can tell something is askew. The set’s back wall contains a television bank, and many of these screens roll footage of green, frog-like creatures. On one an amphibious creature breaks off its own head. A male cable station employee who stands next to Gilbert gestures and speaks in a way that clearly types him as gay, which further highlights Gilbert’s sexual orientation. 38 The next homosexual/homosocial representation is Jimmy Wilder. The choice of the musician Harry Connick Jr. to play the role gives the character a gay or effeminate association because Connick is a singer of older forms of pop and jazz. Wilder plays around a lot. He lays his head upon and cuddles up to Steven Hiller’s shoulder and says that he’s scared. There’s the aforementioned marriage proposal. He is also tied to blacks because, as one of the black knights, he calls himself the raven, sings a few lines and imitates Jesse Jackson. “Kick the tyres and light the fires, big daddy.” Steven Hiller is nervous about his behaviour and reminds him not to “do anything until the fat lady sings,” as well as not to “get premature on him.” Under alien fire, Wilder does too fancy a manoeuvre, takes his mask off, cannot breathe, and then blows up. His premature courtship/death act is underscored through imagery that is part of an extended motif of cigars. We first catch Julius smoking one at the beginning of the film. The men pass Carol Vernallis: Independence Day 82
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Militarism, Misanthropy and the Body Politic: - Brunel University

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